


Rule One

by UtterPandamonium



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Development, Episode: s06e11 The God Complex, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Secret Identity, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-19 19:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17607980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UtterPandamonium/pseuds/UtterPandamonium
Summary: (It isn't "don't wander off.")When the Doctor accidentally ends up stranded far away from Earth with no sonic, no TARDIS, and no fam, she knows she's got to find a way back home to them as fast as she can. Of course, it doesn't help that she's apparently crossing over her own timeline—when she knows she doesn't remember seeing herself the first time she was here—and she's stuck in a hotel that forces its prisoners to confront their worst fears and deepest faiths.Starts at God Complex and diverges from there. (You don't have to know anything about the episode, though, and there's pretty much no rehashing of old dialogue, so don't worry!)





	1. Chapter 1

Scanning the device, she glances down, eyes narrowing, idly weighing her sonic screwdriver in one hand. “When’d you say this started, exactly?” It’s like a distress signal. Or a message of some kind. Or, maybe, it’s just a random malfunction, a bug in the thing’s code, something glitching out and making it start beeping endlessly in that weird pattern. But, y’know, given that it’s her they’re talking about, that’s a little unlikely.

“About two days ago,” Kate tells her. “It was in a case at the time. No one’d touched it. It just started doing this on its own.” Brow furrowing, the Doctor glances up. Lips flat, eyes cloudy: all in all, Kate looks pretty worried. Which is fair, she supposes, because this is probably a problem. Or maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s just nothing. Could be. S’possible.

“What is that, anyway?” Ryan questions, blinking at it. “I mean, it looks like a fancy alien watch with an alarm going off, but I’m guessing it’s probably a bit more than that. Is it some kind of communicator, or something?”

Briskly, she shakes her head. “Vortex manipulator,” the Doctor absently tells him. “Form of time travel, but a bit of a nasty one. Imagine the worst hangover you’ve ever had, toss in a migraine, and multiply it by about nine. And maybe add on a concussion, just for good measure. That’s travelling with a vortex manipulator. Not at all fun. Don’t much recommend it.” Sharply, she glances over at Kate. “And you said Jack gave this to you, why would he do that? Why’d you hole it up away in your Black Archive in the first place?”

The woman doesn’t say anything. She just stares, lips thin.

Right. Course. That’d just be too easy.

“Fine,” the Doctor snaps, eyes flinty. Wait, no. Too harsh. Shaking her head a little too rapidly, she brightens up, forcing a little chipperness into her voice. “Fine! That’s okay. We’ll work things out anyway, it’ll be fine. Not to worry.” Too much stuff to hold. Her eyes flit over to Yasmin. “Yaz, catch.” Blanching, the girl fumbles a little, but manages to catch the sonic just in the nick of time. “Nice one!”

Turning the sonic over in her hands, Yaz pulls a face. “Coulda dropped it.”

“But you didn’t! Look on the bright side.” Okay, what’s next? “Right. Let’s have a look at you.” She clicks her tongue, picking up the vortex manipulator, feeling the weight of it in her hands. “Heavy little thing, aren’t you? Heavy, nasty little thing.” Honestly, she hates vortex manipulators. Can’t stand ‘em, makes a habit of destroying them when she gets the chance, but she might have to hold off on that for the present moment. “Now, I’m fairly certain these things aren’t supposed to pick up on signals, or anything. Definitely aren’t supposed to start beeping in a pattern like this. Someone musta tampered with it. Probably good old Captain Jack, if I had to guess. I definitely wouldn’t put it past him.” Curiously, she flips it over.

“So, wait, who is this Jack person, exactly?” Graham asks, frowning, glancing curiously between Ryan and Yaz. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

Ah. Well. “Old friend,” the Doctor states shortly. “Doesn’t really matter.”

And, that.

That…

What was she just talking about? Hang on, she was saying something a second ago, she swears she was. It’s right on the tip of her tongue. What was it?

Well, there’s a vortex manipulator in her hands. Right, that’s probably it. Situation, important situation. Probably important situation, anyway. “So, here’s my theory. Distress signal, on a vortex manipulator that isn’t supposed to pick up distress signals, with no way to tell where it’s coming from or what exactly it’s saying. So, someone wants help at a specific point in space and time, and they choose **this** device to send that message.”

“Do these things store the location history, or something?” Yaz pipes up, a shrewd look in her eyes, staring at the Doctor. “Time and place they came from. Because I bet the last place it was before this is where we need to go.”

“Brilliant,” she enthuses, clapping her hands together, emphatic. “Got it before I managed to finish talking, well done. Sticker to Yaz.” They’re staring at her. “I mean, I don’t actually have any stickers on me, but. That’s a thing! Primary school teachers give out stickers.” At least, she thinks they do. She hasn’t exactly been to primary school before, not an Earth one anyway, and it’s a very humany thing, but… it’s still a thing, right? She hopes it is.

Ryan pulls a face. “Maybe just stick to points.”

What’s that supposed to mean? “Oi! I could give out stickers if I wanted to! I could buy some of those stickers, happy stickers, from like a store or something, and—and put them in my pockets, and give them to people for positive reinforcement.” They’re all staring at her. “I could! I will! **Watch** me.”

“I mean, I’d take a sticker,” Yaz allows.

Graham shrugs and nods a little, noncommittal. Like he isn’t asking for one, necessarily, but he’d take one if she offered it. Ryan, on the other hand, just sighs and puts his head in his hands, although he’s smiling a little. “Don’t encourage her.”

“No, hang on—do encourage me! I am **hurt** , Ryan Sinclair.” Huh. The full name treatment sounds a lot better, more effective, when there’s a middle name to be working with. Does Ryan have a middle name? “Anyway, as I was saying. And Yaz was saying. Let’s check the location history on this thing, shall we? Do that, hop in the TARDIS, go check things out. Quick and easy, in and out, and then we’re off to that planet I was telling you about with all the furniture and highly impractical hats.” And maybe, on the way there, she can go ahead and destroy this thing. Just for fun.

Grinning brightly, cheerful, she glances down at the vortex manipulator and taps a button.

And is promptly hit with a massive—proper massive—headache. Approximately equal to a hangover, a migraine, and a concussion, all multiplied by about nine.

When the world stops spinning just enough for her to be able to think again, she puts her arm over her face and groans. “Okay,” she murmurs to herself, softly. “I know for a fact that what I pressed was not the on button.” Everything’s too quiet. Eyes still covered, a little louder, she speaks up. “Graham, Ryan, Kate, Yaz. If there’s any chance, any chance at all, that I’m still in that room I was in a second ago, and you’re still here, that’d be really, really good.” Because that would mean that that vortex manipulator did **not** just go off for no good reason and take her somewhere random, which is something she’d personally like to be true. “And, if that’s the case, I’d appreciate it if you spoke up and let me know right about now.”

No one says anything.

Of course. Great. Absolutely fantastic. “Tampered-with vortex manipulators designed to whisk you off into what is very likely a trap,” she mumbles. Shifting a little, she squints blearily at the device, pokes at it a little. It doesn’t respond. She frowns, tries something else. It still isn’t working. “Vortex manipulators that whisk you off into traps and then conveniently stop working as soon as you get there, and Yaz’s still got my sonic.”

 

Traps, apparently, look like Earth hotels from the 1980s.

So, not a trap at all, then. It’s a bit empty-looking, boring, and technically, yeah, it could still maybe be a trap. But, seeing as the trappy part would probably have been the vortex manipulator bit and not the place itself, it’s pretty likely that Jack just managed to mess up the programming of this thing somehow, made it start malfunctioning. A benign mistake, something easily fixed. Although again, given what her life’s like, that might be a little bit of a stretch. Could always be a hostile, alien kind of 1980s Earth hotel. Honestly, she wouldn’t be that surprised.

And there’s something bright, glittering on the floor. The Doctor stares down at it for a second, face scrunching up slightly, and kneels down to scoop it up, rolling it around in the palm of her hand. Somebody’s lost a cufflink. A silver cufflink made to look like a tiny little die, kind of pretty in its own way, and why is this ringing a bell in her head? Because this, this is really familiar. Proper familiar. Maybe this **is** a trap: something’s not right here. This hotel is too quiet, too empty, too cloyingly familiar. She’s getting déjà vu, even. And she really, really isn’t a fan of déjà vu. S’never a good sign. There’s not exactly much good in her past.

Never mind. Doesn’t matter! Right now, she just needs to fix this vortex manipulator and use it to get out of here, quick as she can: back to her TARDIS, her fam. From there, if it turns out there’s a problem here—which there probably is—they can all head back in and check things out, together. But, she doesn’t much fancy doing this on her own. The Doctor hasn’t been on her own much at all recently, not since she got this shiny new face, and she doesn’t plan on breaking that streak anytime soon. Not a good idea, that: she’s no good on her own, and she knows it. Gets too in her own head, starts remembering stuff, and she’s not really a fan of all that. Better not.

She pockets the cufflink and starts walking.

It takes about a minute and a half of her wandering around the hotel for her to notice anything out of the ordinary, anything different.

A door. Labelled 13, and it looks like just another door on the surface, but she knows it isn’t. The Doctor can tell, there’s something different about that room, something important inside. She has to see what’s in there, she’s gotta know, it’s crucial. Vital, and it’s hers, and she needs it.

She doesn’t even know her hand’s on the doorknob until somebody’s ripping it away.

“Perception filter,” she mumbles to herself, staring at the door, hands curling into fists at her sides. Definitely a perception filter, because this door shouldn’t have had that kind of effect on her, because—looking at it again—there is absolutely nothing different about this room. And yet, she wants to open it, she wants to open it a **lot**. Too much to be natural. Except perception filters don’t usually manage to get to her that much. Maybe an advanced, upgraded, fancy one? Either way, something really wanted her to open that door. Something is definitely wrong here.

Wait a second. Someone’d just grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Trust me, you really don’t want to go in there,” someone says. And. She knows that voice. “Not unless you want to get possessed, or something, and I’m assuming you probably don’t.” She **knows** that voice. How, how can she know that voice. No, wait, wrong question. She knows how she knows that voice, she remembers that voice, couldn’t forget it in a million years. Which isn’t counting the billions of years she’s technically had with which to forget it—but anyway, how can that voice be here? Because it can’t.

But when she turns around, sure enough, there she is. All ginger and Scottish and young and pretty and bright-eyed, a sharp look on her face: concerned, alert, and just a tad bit suspicious. “Ah,” the Doctor says, eyes a little too wide, grin frozen solid on her face. “Hello!”

Amy Pond stares back at her, one eyebrow raised slightly. No recognition on her face. “Hi.”

Right.

Okay, sure. Familiar-looking 80s hotel, dice cufflink, weird elevator music, Amy Pond. That means this must have happened, be happening, sometime during her eleventh regeneration, eleventh face. Well, technically, thirteenth regeneration and twelfth face, but that’s counting Sandshoes’s vanity regeneration and, um… somebody else. Who doesn’t really count.

So, eleventh, the one with all the tweed and suspenders and bowties. And she’s getting off topic. When was this, because she’s almost certain she’s been in this hotel before, and. Amy. Amy’s here, too, and the Doctor can feel smooth stone, the ghost of stone beneath her fingertips, screaming, a memory, angels and a grave, but, it’s. Fine. Doesn’t matter. It’s fine! That was a while ago, she’s moved on, it’s fine now. And, and—Amy Pond! After all these years! Blimey, it’s been a while, she honestly can’t believe it, it’s, well obviously it’s brilliant seeing her again, she—

“Whoa now.” Suddenly, there’s a hand on her wrist, and the Doctor’s being yanked away from the door again. Because apparently her hand was on the doorknob again. Bloody good perception filter, this. Or she’s just really distracted right now. Possibly both. And, she might **possibly** be panicking, just a little. “Sorry, this place kinda gets in your head,” Amy winces, patting her back a little awkwardly. “Who are you, anyway? And exactly how long’ve you been here? I hadn’t seen you before now. Have you been hiding, or…”

“Yeah,” she murmurs absently, shaking her head a little. Focus time. “Hiding, that’s it, um—I know this’s probably a stupid question, but where exactly are we right now?” She really should remember this. It’s right on the tip of her tongue, she knows she’s been here before, but it’s been so long. Something to do with puppets, maybe? Or Greek mythology. One of those two, she can’t remember which one. Stupid brain, not working right. Stupid Doctor. Grimacing, face scrunching up accusatorily, she slaps lightly at her forehead, like it’ll kickstart her head, or knock the memories loose.

Both eyebrows shoot up for a second. And then Amy laughs, and it’s the best noise she’s ever heard. “You know, believe it or not, that’s not nearly as stupid a question as you’d think,” she says.

Oh. “It isn’t?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which thirteen rips off her entire backstory

Greek mythology **and** puppets. It was both!

Except, well, by Greek mythology, she means an alien that looks an awful lot like a minotaur, driven half-mad, ruled by its instincts, set up roaming a maze that drags in people with faith in something and turns them into its dinner. And by puppets, she means some really creepy-looking ventriloquist dummies. But aside from that, the Doctor was right.

Because that’s what this is, this place. A prison floating through space, containing a creature that shows people their worst fears in order to feed on their beliefs. It turns their faith in whatever they believe in into faith in it, makes them praise it, and then kills them.

And the problem with that—the real, giant, catastrophic, potentially universe-ending problem—is that the Doctor doesn’t remember seeing herself that day. Not this face. There had been no strange woman showing up out of nowhere in the middle of things, and no mention of one from Amy, either. And if the Doctor walks away right now, runs off in order to try to preserve the timeline, she knows Amy’s gonna end up mentioning it.

Needless to say, this is really, really bad. Going back on her own timeline like this is so incredibly dangerous, especially when she doesn’t remember anything of the sort happening the first time round. When she specifically remembers it not happening. This could end up causing a paradox, a rupture in the spacetime continuum.

The TARDIS would definitely have never allowed anything like this to happen. That settles it. First chance she gets, soon as she’s back with Team TARDIS, this vortex manipulator’s going straight into the time vortex. Or maybe into space—or, maybe, into a supernova! Yeah, that’ll definitely be fun. So she’s got that to look forward to, after all this is over. Assuming she survives the fragmentation of her timeline that’s probably about to happen, anyway. She’ll have to keep her head down if she’s gonna have any chance of surviving this. Make as little changes as possible, preserve the original timeline as much as she can. Keep things on track. Any serious alterations could end up rewriting her whole history at best, and destroying literally everything at worst, so. Better try to avoid that.

She can’t interfere. Much as she wants to, as hard as not interfering’s been for her recently, she knows she can’t. The people who died here have to die. Rory and Amy have to go home, start distancing themselves from her. The Doctor’ll just have to pass herself off as human while she’s stranded here, and stick to the shadows, and watch and wait. That’s what her species are supposed to be good at, right? Better just do what she’s supposed to do, for once in her life.

“Come on.” Waggling her eyebrows a little, Amy gestures grandly towards the door, a teasing quirk to her lips. The expression’s strained around the edges, though. Tense. She’s worried, trying to put on an act for her sake. “Let’s go.” When’d she learn to start doing that? Had she always done that, and the Doctor just hadn’t noticed before?

Amelia Pond. Amy Williams. What had the Doctor done to her?

No, okay, it doesn’t matter. “Alrighty then.” A little helplessly, she splays out her hands, gesturing towards the door. “You first!”

As soon as the Doctor walks through that door, she only has eyes for herself.

Or, rather, himself. Themselves? Pronouns can be a bit tricky sometimes—the point is, she’s staring at her old face. Can’t take her eyes off it, because… that’s her. Or it had been, once. A very, very long time ago. Honestly. How long has it been since she’d seen that face? Last time she had’d probably been in a mirror.

It takes him a minute to notice. He’s caught up in talking to a woman, hands curled awkwardly around a cup of tea, looking gangly and awkward as always. But then, eventually, absently, Eleven glances up, and looks at her. And stares. And she stares back.

And they end up making tense eye contact for a couple seconds too long, and it takes him hopping up out of his chair and whirling towards her for the Doctor to remember to glance away. Remember, she can’t attract attention to herself, and she absolutely cannot let him know who she is. That would be a bad way to try to preserve the timeline—and, not only that, but if she did let on that she’s a future version of him, it’d make things a lot more difficult to handle. She absolutely does not get on well with herself. And this regeneration especially doesn’t.

See, a thing she’s noticed over the years is that each face she takes on, each regeneration, ends up being influenced by something. Some key emotion, or event, or generally something that happened with the last body. And she never really thinks about it until after the face is dead and gone, never figures out what it is until after it’s over, but it’s still definitely a thing that happens. For Nine, it was bitterness, self-loathing. For Ten, it’d been love.

And Eleven? Grief, self-preservation. Heartbreak. Which is something you’d think would be a lot harder to pull off, given the fact that the Doctor’s got two hearts there to work with, but that’s still definitely what did it. Ten’s last few scattered moments, not wanting to go. And what’d it turn him into? Someone who hated endings. The man who forgets, who doesn’t like to look in the mirror too closely for fear of what he’s gonna find. And that man isn’t really gonna react very well faced with a living reminder of an ending on its way, a reflection of just what he is. She remembers how badly it’d gone when he’d been around Ten and the other one during that whole Zygon thing: that tiny, choking little ball of hatred and self-loathing he’d carried around in his throat that day. Probably better to avoid that.

Which is good! Be easier this way, anyway.

“Hello.” Eleven’s staring at her, narrow-eyed, inquisitive, looking just a little too interested for her liking. “You’re new here, haven’t seen you before. Who are you? When’d you get here?” He’s speaking too quickly, voice oddly soft, watching her intently.

“Hello there! I’m…” Oh, wait a second, she can’t use John Smith anymore, can she? Ugh, honestly, that’s so annoying! Course, she couldn’t really anyway this time, even if she was still a man, because that would be a dead giveaway—tell him exactly who she is—so she’s gotta come up with something else. No Joan Smiths or Jane Does for her, not today. “O’Brien,” she decides. Sorry, Graham. “Merissa O’Brien.” There! A non-obvious, subtle, perfectly normal human name. She quite likes it! “Nice to meet you. Also, in no particular order, where am I, how’d I get here, who are you, how do I get out of here—and also, completely unrelated, but can I just say I really like your outfit. Very nice.”

Amy chokes. “Sorry, you what?”

As the Doctor suspected, Eleven puffs up a little at the praise, smugly straightening his bowtie, a little of the suspicion dying down in his eyes. Compliments: they work every time. Or some of the time, at least. A solid fifty percent. Not to mention, they also provide a pretty good distraction. “Course you do, that’s cause it’s cool.” Glancing over at Amy, he raises his eyebrows—or what little eyebrows he’s got to raise, anyway. “See?” he mouths.

“I mean,” the human drawls, eyes raking over the Doctor’s outfit, clearly reassessing her. “Actually, given what you’re wearing, I’m not really all that surprised.”

“Hang on, what’s that supposed to mean?” Incredulously, she glances back down at her clothes. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them.

Her eyebrows are raised. “You’re wearing **yellow suspenders**.”

“Yes, I am.” The Doctor raises her eyebrows right back at Amy. “And?”

Eleven interrupts, full force of his attention clearly focused back on the Doctor, suspicion back on his face. “To answer your question, you’re in an endless, constantly-shifting maze designed to look like an Earth hotel from the 1980s, people’s nightmares and worst fears are wandering the halls, and this whole place is almost certainly alien in origin—and now tell me, Merissa,” and his voice twists dangerously around her pseudonym, “does that surprise you?”

Yeah, he definitely suspects something. She keeps her face calculatedly blank, uncomprehending. “Um.” One slow blink. Then another fast one. “I… sorry, when you say ‘alien.’ Are you saying we’re out of Sheffield now? What country are we in, exactly?” A third, longer blink. “Wait a second, have I been kidnapped? Or is this some weird new reality tv thing, because if so, I do not remember signing up for this.”

“Mm,” he distractedly hums, sweeping his sonic in front of her and glancing critically at the reading. “Yes, that’s probably it.”

“Okay then,” Amy says slowly, eyes wide, dragging the words out for all they’re worth. “Well. Doctor, if you’re done being weird. Merissa and I’re gonna go grab some tea now, yeah?”

“Oh, Pond.” Lightly, Eleven taps Amy’s nose, although he spares the Doctor another narrow-eyed glance when he thinks she isn’t looking. “I’m never going to be done being weird. Go on, get your tea.”

The human nods absentmindedly, and then—all of a sudden—her eyes widen. “Wait, no. Hang on. Forgot to mention earlier, um…” Fishing into her pocket, she pulls out some crumpled-up pieces of paper and shoves them towards him. “I found these a little while back. I dunno, they might end up being useful.”

 

“So.” Curiously, Amy tilts her head. “Where’d you say you were from, exactly?”

She swallows. “Sheffield! Nice little place.” Well, not little by Earth standards. “S’a nice enough city, I like it. Got some good friends there, y’know.” Amy’s being subtle about it, but she’s watching the Doctor closely, examining her, like she’s looking for something out of the ordinary. Must have noticed Eleven eyeing her a minute ago. And right now, actually: when the Doctor glances over towards him, she accidentally makes direct eye contact with him for a split second, before he tears his gaze away and suddenly becomes very interested in those papers Amy’d given him. Well. Looks like she isn’t managing to be as discreet as she meant to. And here she thought she was managing to do a decent enough job, too. What’s making her stand out, the shirt?

“So what do you do, then?” Rory offers up, although he seems less on-edge than his wife does, more distracted, rubbing at his forehead a little. Probably too busy worrying about the phobia death maze they’re currently in to notice the way Eleven’s watching her right now.

“Oh, you know,” she says vaguely, waving a hand. What do normal humans do for a living? Think of a really humany job to have, come on… Hang on a tick, Yaz and Ryan both have humany jobs, don’t they? She might as well steal that, since she took her last name from Graham. Make it an even balance. “Working in a warehouse right now, but I’ve actually been thinking about trying to be a police officer for a while. Might give that a shot, assuming we actually manage to get out of this place alive. So.” Leaning forwards slightly, the Doctor rests her head in one hand. “When he said alien, he, uh. Well, I figured he meant out of the country. But he didn’t actually, did he?”

“Nope.” Amy pops the p.

“Wow.” Shaking her head slightly, she slips a little dazed incredulousness into her face. She is nailing this pretending to be a human thing. Well done, herself. “Well. I suppose I’m just gonna stick that in the ‘freak out about later’ pile. Tabling that for the present moment.”

Rory pulls a face. “Probably not a bad plan,” he mutters, almost half to himself. Good old Rory. Rory the Roman.

“Praise him.”

It takes a second for that to register in her brain. Another for her to whirl around. One of the strangers—the one with the face, she can’t remember his name—is sitting, hands clapped over his mouth, eyes bulging.

It’s taking him. The monster in this hotel has showed him his worst fears, and now it’s going to possess him, rob him of what he believes in, make him beg for death before it eats his soul. And she knows, because it happened the first time. She remembers it. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs to himself, grip on the mug of tea loosening dangerously, the whole thing threatening to fall and break to pieces.

Maybe—

No. No, no no no. Bad Doctor. That train of thought is one she absolutely cannot let herself follow to its conclusion. If she saves him, it’ll compromise the timeline. She has to stand back, and make sure not to interfere, no matter what. Be like a **proper** Time Lady for once in her life, right? Finally fitting in with her people, doing what she’s **supposed** to do. God. “I am so, so sorry.”

“Sorry, what’d you just say?” Rory questions, glancing at her, face a mingling of alarm and scrunched-up confusion.

She swallows. “Nothin’,” the Doctor murmurs, the words sticky and sour and acrid on her tongue, and—tightening her hold on the cup—brings it to her lips. Good old British tea. She likes tea quite a lot, now. If only it’d manage to wash away that bad taste in her mouth. “What’s wrong with him?”


	3. Chapter 3

The boy’s sitting on the floor. Dead. Just as it’d happened before, just as it’s supposed to be. Everything as it should be. This person died, he’s gone for good, gone forever, but so long as she hasn’t compromised her own personal history it’s all supposed to be fine. She’s supposed to stand here over this person’s corpse and just be **okay** with knowingly letting him die a second time, letting his life slip between her fingers. Except this time, she could have saved him.

This is why she never goes back on her own timeline. This is why she never goes near a fixed point if she can help it anymore. Because she ends up in situations like this.

Eleven’s coming. She can hear his footsteps, off in the distance. Lips thinning, the Doctor crouches down next to the body—taking in his slack expression, cloudy gaze staring emptily off into the distance—and carefully, gently, closes his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs again, quietly, and it still isn’t enough. She could have done something, she could have stopped this, but she didn’t. She just let it happen.

Okay. Time to hide, before her past self sees her standing over a dead body and comes to some rather unfortunate assumptions. And she didn’t think that was gonna be a sentence she’d have to think today, but oh well. It happens!

Quickly, she glances around. Running’d be easy, but it’d make too much noise. If she tries that, he could hear her footsteps and end up chasing after her. Better duck into one of these rooms, quickly and quietly as she can, and stay in there a while in order to avoid being caught. Nodding firmly to herself, the Doctor picks a nearby one at random and ducks in, sliding the door carefully shut, leaning forwards and resting her forehead against the wood of the doorframe and closing her eyes.

Fine, okay. It’s fine.

Everything’s going to plan well enough. Eleven’s still been eyeing her, but she’s been being as unobtrusive and normal and human as she could possibly be, so that’s no fault of hers. That’s his problem. Now, what she needs to do is nick his sonic without him noticing and use it on that vortex manipulator, figure out what’s wrong with the stupid thing and fix it and use it to get back to her TARDIS and the gang. Preferably before doing any substantial damage to the timeline.

Huh. This place, this maze, was designed to drag in people of strong faith in something. Luck, conspiracies, religion. In Amy’s case, faith in Eleven; in Eleven’s case, faith in Amy. He’d had this irrational, strange, subconscious belief that she’d always be there. Strong, unstoppable, a force of nature, immortal, forever young. Forever seven years old. Amelia Pond, like a name from a fairytale. He’d given that up, and made her give her faith in him up, in order to save both their lives.

But, maybe… is it possible that **that’s** why she’s here? Not the vortex manipulator being unreliable, not some random glitch, but the maze scooping her up out of nowhere and trying to make her—her faith—into some minotaur’s dinner. It’s possible. Not all that likely, though, because it deciding to pick her up at the same time she pressed that button would be one hell of a coincidence. Although, it glitching out and taking her to a place she’s already been before—at the exact time she was there—is one hell of a coincidence, too.

Either way, the Doctor already knows she has a room here, which means she has enough faith in something for this place to try to turn her into a meal. Question is, faith in what? Because, far as she knew, she didn’t believe in much of anything anymore. Hasn’t for a long time. She lost that sometime last regeneration. So, that means that something’s changed about her since then. Something fundamental, at the very core of her, and she hadn’t even noticed it until right now.

Well, in her defense, she **has** been pretty busy recently. Business as usual! You know how it is: places to go, things to see, people to save. No time for self-reflection with all that universe waiting out there, and new friends, and everything. No reason to waste time looking back, either. There’s more important things to be doing! And looking back’s a bit boring, anyway.

It’ll probably be fine, her not working out what her new faith is. After all, convenient thing about this hotel: it only starts possessing you, messing with the way you think, when you walk into your room and take a look at your worst fear! So long as she manages to avoid going into her room while she’s here, makes sure she steals that sonic and fixes the vortex manipulator before it drags her in, everything’ll be right as rain.

Huh. Bit grim, but she can’t help but wonder what’d even be in her room nowadays. They contain people’s fears, phobias, nightmares. When she was here before, it’d been the crack in the universe, because she’d known that thing was gonna come back to ruin everything at some point. But now, that’s all over, so what would it be now?

Anyway, doesn’t matter. She’s got more important things to worry about. Nodding to herself, the Doctor breathes in, breathes out, and then turns around.

Ah.

This is her room.

__

Rory’s walking down the hallway, when all of a sudden a door slams open and somebody bursts out of it.

Admittedly, he may panic for a second. Just a second, though. In his defense, they’re in a probably-alien hotel full of literal nightmares, and he isn’t really keen on people’s worst fears jumping out of rooms in order to try to attack him. The person who runs out of the room ends up slamming into the wall opposite the door and falling down with a yelp, though, which kind of ruins the effect.

After a second, he recognizes her. It’s that new woman, the bleach-blonde one with the rainbow-y shirt. “Merissa?” he calls out hesitantly, peering down at her. In response, she groans, hand swiping blearily over her scrunched-up face. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” she mumbles, although the tone of her voice is decidedly not okay. After a second, Merissa shakes her head and pushes herself to her feet. “Peachy. Fantastic. _Molto bene_ , as some might say. Not me, though.” She squints over at him. “You’re Rory, right?”

It takes him an embarrassing second too long to process the question. But again, like he said: alien hotel, worst fears, distracting elevator music playing constantly in the background, and no TARDIS. Given everything, he kind of feels like he has a right to be a little off peak right now. “Uh, yeah, that’s me.” Lips thinning, turning downwards into a frown, he glances over at the door. “Was that…”

When he glances back over at her, Merissa is staring at him with dark eyes. It’d almost be scary, if not for everything he’s been through travelling with the Doctor: he kinda gets why Amy kept going on about not trusting this woman, now. “Ah, don’t worry about me.” Minutely, she shakes her head, still watching him. “Let’s go ahead and work on getting out of here, yeah?” A little too roughly, she pats his arm, expression shifting: near-manic all of a sudden. “C’mon, let’s get back to the others. Have any of you worked out why they’ve brought us all here yet? And where exactly are we, anyway? Not sure I buy the outer space and aliens theory that the Doctor was going on about earlier, sounds a bit rubbish to me. All sci-fi and stuff. Honestly, I think he might possibly be a bit mental, to be perfectly honest with you. Also, does he have an actual, proper name, because just calling him ‘Doctor’ seems a bit weird, don’t you think—”

“Actually,” Rory interrupts, cutting her off before she manages to get any further, because. Wow. She can talk a lot. Only other person he knows who can talk that fast and that much uninterrupted probably has five lungs or something to match his two hearts. “I’m gonna head back that way for a second. Um, they told me to grab something.” Please don’t let her see through his lie.

She stares at him for just a second too long. “Right,” she finally murmurs. “Okay. Course. Go on ahead. I’ll head off towards the kitchens.” Vaguely, she gestures off towards the other end of the hall.

“Thanks.”

Briskly, not letting himself hesitate, trying to walk as normally as he can manage, Rory turns left at the nearest corner, and stops behind the wall, and waits for a minute. And then—when he’s confident she’s had long enough to leave—he turns back around and makes a beeline for her door.

Amy doesn’t trust her, because the Doctor doesn’t trust her. If neither one of them trust her, then they’re probably onto something: the pair of them have a fairly impressive track record. And yeah, granted, doing this is kind of an invasion of privacy. But, given the circumstances, he probably doesn’t have much choice. They need all the information they can get.

He opens the door.

Merissa stares back at him, eyebrows raised, clearly judging him.

A little guiltily, Rory jumps back, eyes blown wide. Ah. “Um, hi,” he slowly says, grasping desperately for an excuse. “Okay, this definitely isn’t what it looks like. I can explain.” There is absolutely no good reason for him to have snuck off into this room seconds after claiming he was going the opposite way. “I mean. Well. Okay, to be honest: no, I can’t explain, this is exactly what it looks like. Sorry.”

“It still happened, you know,” she tells him.

“Yeah, it…” Wait a second, that doesn’t make any sense. “Sorry, what?”

It’s only then that he notices where she’s standing. Next to the window, one finger pulling down on the blinds, glancing out at something he can’t quite see. “It was a trick, yeah. Clever plan, fixed everything all nice and tidy. Just this once, everybody lives. Classic. But it still happened. When you thought it was real, you made that choice.” Merissa glances back at him. “You still did that to them. You were willing to. Run as far as you like, but it isn’t disappearing that easy. None of it is. Never does. Y’know, I really thought you would have learned that by now.”

Swallowing, Rory steps into the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. “I don’t understand,” he mutters, except he does. Or he thinks he does, maybe. It doesn’t seem like she’s talking to him, and there’s no obvious fear in this room. Which means that, if he’s right… it’s her. She’s the fear. So, Merissa—she’s afraid of herself? That’s not exactly the kind of thing he was expecting, to be honest, if she’s secretly evil or something. Most proper villains don’t have a problem with themselves.

“How many children out there, right now, d’you think?” She jerks her head towards the window. “Oh, come off it, I know you know. You counted. Can’t forget a thing like that.”

Well, guess there’s only one way to find out what she’s talking about. Cautiously, slowly, he licks his lips. “What d’you mean, out there?” She has to be looking at some place through the blinds, but it could be anywhere.

The woman grins, and raises the blinds, and outside there’s a world on fire, and. God. It looks like a warzone. “Two point four seven billion.” She’s smiling with her mouth, but not with her eyes. “Not nearly enough, don’t you think?”

Okay.

“Right,” Rory says slowly, raising his hands almost automatically, edging towards the door. “Well. Um. You can just stay in here for now, with your window, and I am going to… go out there now.”

Her gaze follows him all the way to the door.

When he closes the door behind him, he collapses against it—just for a second—and closes his eyes, and thinks. World spinning dizzily around him, suspicions twisting down deep in his gut.

This is someone the Doctor knows, who the Doctor doesn’t trust. And this person’s biggest fear is herself, and he thinks maybe the fear-her was just implying that she was responsible for the deaths of literal billions of children, and she can talk him in circles and she was talking about choosing to forget things and running away and there’s a familiar darkness in her eyes and she’s wearing **suspenders**.

“I absolutely cannot tell the Doctor,” he exhales, and runs a hand over his face.


	4. Chapter 4

Standing outside the room everyone else is in, leaning up against the wall, the Doctor closes her eyes and listens.

Eleven’s on the phone with a woman who’s trapped here with them, Rita. Trying to save her life. And it isn’t gonna work, because it didn’t work the first time, either. Another death. The last one, excluding the minotaur itself—and honestly, that’s gonna be more of a mercy killing, seeing as it doesn’t wanna be alive right now anyway. Another death, and then no more.

She just has to let her die.

“Rita, please,” Eleven’s begging, angry, desperate. “Please. Please!”

Silence.

A minute passes. And then, suddenly, the door’s bursting open, and he’s surging past the Doctor and into another room, and there’s incoherent yelling and breaking glass. Instantly, Rory and Amy are leaving too, going after him—and the only one who’s actually seemed to notice that she’s there at all is Rory, who gives her a strange, wide-eyed look that she doesn’t quite know how to interpret—and barreling into the room. The door shuts behind them.

The breaking stops. Probably because her past self’s managing to muster just enough self-restraint to keep himself from hurting them on accident, or frightening them too much. But there’s voices, angry shouting, both female and male, and then all of a sudden the door’s slamming open again and based on the way he’s staring, he’s **definitely** noticed her now. “We’re going to talk,” Eleven demands, back straight, glowering, a low growl to his voice. “Alone.”

Huh. So that’s what she looks like when she’s angry. S’different, being on the outside of it. She doesn’t much like it. Not because she’s intimidated, of course: just because it feels wrong. Especially when she doesn’t know why it’s her he’s angry at. “Sorry?” she says, blinking slowly, feigning ignorance. “What’s going on?” Surely he can’t have figured out who she is already. Well, technically, it’s possible. Given all the experience she’s had over the years, the Doctor’s developed quite the knack for picking up on microexpressions, tells, little clues to help her figure out when people aren’t all they seem and piece together just who they really are. But it’s also the Doctor who’s doing the lying. And if there’s one thing she’s very, very good at, it’s lying.

Licking his lips nervously, Rory half-steps between them, raising a hand like he’s a student trying and failing to get the attention of a teacher. “Um, I don’t think—”

“We’re going to talk, alone,” Eleven repeats, mercilessly cutting him off, eyes boring unblinkingly into hers.

“Or ‘please,’ as people used to say,” the Doctor mutters, pulling a face. “Bit rude, you are. Anyone ever tell you that?” Well, guess there’s only really one way she’s gonna figure out how much he’s worked out, and control the situation as best she can. “I mean, okay, I suppose. Is everything alright? Did something happen?” Keeping her expression dull, blank, confused, she blinks. “Where’s Rita gone off to?”

The two companions trade looks. Amy looks a little sympathetic, she thinks, but she can’t quite tell how her husband’s feeling. “She’s dead,” Rory finally admits, quiet.

“Oh,” the Doctor murmurs quietly, putting just the right amount of numb horror in her voice in order to be believable. Only way it’d be any more convincing is if she actually felt it, and that wouldn’t be by much, either. “Okay.”

Although the other two look a little sadder now, more open than they had a minute ago, Eleven’s expression hasn’t changed much. There’s no sympathy there, no pain. Just anger. Actually, if anything, she thinks he’s gotten angrier. That probably means that either he knows she already knew what happened to Rita—because she’s lived this before, because she’s a future version of him—or he thinks that she’s responsible for killing Rita. Honestly, given the circumstances, she’s not sure which option she prefers.

Either way, though. Whatever he knows about her—or thinks he knows, anyway—he hasn’t let on to Amy and Rory. They would have responded a lot differently if he has. So, there’s that at least. It’s something. Look on the bright side, right?

She’s… maybe it’s because she’s seeing familiar faces again out of nowhere like this, or because she’s stranded right now. Or it’s because she’s with another version of herself, specifically, and—like Eleven—she also doesn’t get on well with other Doctors. Or, it’s because she popped into her room to look at her worst fear earlier, and it was, well, **that** , but she’s purposefully not thinking about that right now so never mind. But, no matter what’s causing it, the Doctor’s feeling a little… under the weather, shall we say. She hasn’t felt like this since she regenerated. Hasn’t had the chance, really: ever since it happened, she’s been so busy all the time. Only time she’s started slipping again was when the Daleks showed their metally faces again out of nowhere. Well, to be more accurate, when a single Dalek showed its squid face out of nowhere, but still.

Blimey, she really is rubbish on her own. She’d forgotten what it was like, that. After all, it’s not like she’s even had the chance to be alone much, recently. Hasn’t given herself one. Luckily, if she plays her cards right, she might not have to be for much longer. If she gets a chance—and it won’t break space-time—she’s stealing Eleven’s sonic, now, and using it on the vortex manipulator in order to get back to the TARDIS. Remember who she’s doing this for. Yaz, Ryan, Graham: her fam. For them, for **them** , she can manage to pull this off. “Okay then,” the Doctor chirps, and flashes a smile. “Alone, you said?”

 

“So go on, then,” Eleven says, tone soft and dangerous, smiling a little. Watching. “Explain.”

Good thing she isn’t scared by her own melodramatics. Although, she should probably pretend to be, just a little. Most people do usually tend to be at least a little frightened of her if they’re smart. “Hope you realize I still don’t know what you’re on about,” she tells him, although she starts tapping her fingers on the table a little, in what should hopefully look to him like a nervous tick. Scared enough to make her human disguise look convincing enough, not scared enough to come off as actually being guilty. A good balance.

His gaze strays down to her hand, and stays there for a long minute. “Trust me, I am really not in the mood for your games. Not today.” Shaking his head slightly, he pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “So go ahead and explain,” he demands, tone souring, going from ominiously calm to rushed and bitter. “You’ve always loved your **monologues** , haven’t you,” and his voice twists bitterly over the word, “so let’s just get it out of the way now so we can get on with the rest of it, shall we? How did you survive? How’d you come back?”

Right. So, bad news is, he does probably know that it’s her. That she’s a future regeneration, and he’s bitter because she knew Rita and everyone was gonna die and didn’t say anything about it and also because she’s him. On the bright side, though, the universe hasn’t imploded yet, so that means she can still probably fix this, if she’s lucky. And she usually is!

“Question: are you actually mad?” She inflects the line just right, curiosity and a smidge of disbelief, before she pretends to realize just how rude the question was. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, just—you keep going on and on like I know who you are, when somebody’s just died. When we’ve been kidnapped, and stuck in this crazy hotel, and we’re probably all gonna starve to death locked away in here, and you’re actin’ like I’ve done something!”

“Okay, fine,” he snaps, eyes suddenly alight, talking fast and harsh. “As soon as you showed up, I could detect your psychic presence. It’s too developed, too powerful. Felt like a Time Lord consciousness, but I wasn’t entirely sure, had to check, so I checked the hearts, and **guess** what?” Near-theatrically, he sonics her again. “You have two. Which means that there’s only one person in this universe that you could possibly be.”

Ah. Well. Nothing she could have really done about that, not without a chameleon arch or some ill-advised heart surgery or something. It was worth a shot.

“And that person is?” she asks, although it’s rhetorical. This version of her doesn’t know that Gallifrey’s safe, hidden in a painting and then away at the edge of reality. As far as this version of her knows, he is the only Time Lord left in this universe.

He sighs, staring at her, eyes bitter and tired. “Well, you’re obviously not me.” Wait. What? “This is my last regeneration. My last face. I’m on record dying permanently with this face, soon. It’s a fixed point. Lake Silencio, Utah: one hell of a vacation spot.” God, he doesn’t even know about Trenzalore yet.

Throat dry, the Doctor swallows. She thinks she’s starting to understand, now. “You didn’t answer my question,” she quietly points out.

“Must we always go through this?”

She says what she knows he’s expecting to hear. “Maybe I just want to hear you say my name.”

Even though she knows it’s what he was expecting, Eleven still sighs. “Master,” he grates out, venom dripping from his voice.

Very, very calmly, she sits back, and assesses the situation. Weighs her options. Thinks about the pros and cons, about just how she’s gonna get out of here, about how sure she’s gonna make sure she gets out of here, about the Earth and the timeline and just who she’s fighting for, about Yaz and Ryan and Graham.

Because she needs them. Because at this point, she’ll do anything, anything, to get back to them.

“Actually,” she says, “nowadays, I go by Missy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)


	5. Chapter 5

“Missy as in Mistress,” he exhales, realization blooming across his face—as well as what she feels like is a frankly disproportionate amount of anger. “As in Merissa.”

Ah. “Got it in one,” she lies smoothly, not letting herself so much as blink in surprise. “I was wondering how long it was gonna take for you to catch on.” Of course, that’s a lie, because she herself hadn’t caught onto that. Hadn’t even thought of that until now. Blimey, that’s convenient. Or inconvenient, she supposes, depending on how you look at it. “So. What now?” It’s not just him she’s asking, of course, but he doesn’t know that. She’s also asking herself. Because this is **not** how she’d been planning for this to go.

Right, well, even if it’s a bit unexpected, this is the situation she’s working with now. She’s gonna have to work with what she’s got. If the only reason all of reality isn’t literally falling to pieces right now is because Eleven thinks she’s the Master, then she’s gonna have to damn well be convincing about it while she’s stuck here. And try to get a chance to nick his sonic, while she’s at it.

The Master’s regenerations have all varied a lot on the surface level over the years, but there’s been some constants. One of which is hating her, obviously, although just how much depends on the regeneration, but Eleven hasn’t met the actual Missy yet. The last version of the Master that he will’ve seen by this point is the blond one. Harry Saxon. And that one was, honestly speaking, one of the worst in a long while. That means that Eleven’ll be expecting her to be a lot like him, mad in both meanings of the word. Not the same as Saxon, but similar. Right now, she has to act like she’s old, angry, spiteful: like she hates her past self with every fiber of her being, every drop of blood in her veins, every cell in her body.

Shouldn’t be too hard.

“Why are you here? Why now, why so close to my death?” She doesn’t say anything: just leans back and watches him, an amused smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. Somehow, his expression manages to get even more furious. “Answer me!”

At that, the Doctor laughs, letting bitter glee twist up her voice into something hateful. “Oh, there he is,” she drawls. “I love it when you do that. Acting the tall, dark hero, the Oncoming Storm—is that why you insisted on talking to me on your own? Because you didn’t want the Ponds seein’ you act like this?” Leaning forward, she grins. “You don’t have to answer. I’ve always been able to see through you, Doctor. You don’t want them seeing too far past the bowtie and babyface. Think they might decide to run off, if they did. I mean, I wouldn’t blame them.” Her tone sharpens, going angrier. “Would **you**?”

“Leave them out of this,” Eleven spits, jaw clenched. “How did you escape the time lock? You were trapped.”

Ah. Well. “Spoilers,” she offers up, crossing her fingers behind her back. It’s a risky move, but one she’s gonna have to take.

Sure enough, he recognizes the word. “Sorry,” he says, very quietly, “what did you just say?” Before the Doctor gets the chance to try repeating herself, though, he shushes her. “No, I heard you, rhetorical device to keep me thinking—” Near-accusatorily, he points at her. “You know River. How, how can you know River?”

“Spoilers,” she repeats, raising her eyebrows, and taps her index finger to her lips twice. “Best not, don’t you think?”

“Okay.” Eleven stares at her for a long moment, and then shakes his head, growling a little, turning away. The Doctor can see his sonic, tucked neatly away into the pocket of that tweed jacket of his. Well, she isn’t getting her hands on that easy, not without him noticing. “Okay, fine. Fine.” Angrily, he whirls back around, a forced smile that she can tell’s meant to come off as threatening on his face. “Then why are you here?” he asks again.

“Hard as it seems to be for you to understand, the whole universe doesn’t revolve ‘round you,” she tells him, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t part of anything I’ve done. It isn’t a plan, or a trap, or a trick. I was in the neighborhood, and this place pulled me in. That’s all, honest.” Grinning sharply, the Doctor offers him her pinky. “Pinky swear.” If he goes for it, she’ll be able to use it to surprise him: grab his arm, use it as leverage, go for the sonic in his pocket and then run like hell and hope the hotel cooperates with her. Won’t be ideal, but it’ll work.

He doesn’t go for it. “If you’re lying to me,” he threatens, “if you hurt any of these people, I swear—”

“You’ll what?” Dropping her hand, the Doctor laughs. “Blow me up? Sorry, mate, I think you’ve done that to enough Time Lords already. Be a little more creative than that.”

“Stop it.”

She doesn’t. “And you wouldn’t use a gun. Not your style. After all, you tend to like pretending you’re above all that, don’t you?” Grinning wide and angry, she folds her arms. “Nah, tell you what? I know what you’d do. You’d put the gun in one of your friends’ hands, and tell them to pull the trigger, and then turn around and blame them for it when they actually listen to you. You absolute, utter **hypocrite**. You don’t deserve them, any of them. And they deserve a hell of a lot better than you.”

It’s only then, after all that, that she realizes what she’s actually just said.

Ah.

Well.

She, um. Honestly hadn’t meant to say that.

She, she doesn’t know where that’d come from, exactly. It’d just sort of… happened on its own. In retrospect, that was probably a bit much. Sure, it was definitely the kind of lengthy, dramatic monologue the Master’d give, but they would never say that her friends deserved better than her. They’d probably just call them “pets” or something equally derogatory and just leave it at that. That wasn’t really very in character of her at all, was it?

“Look,” she says weakly, backtracking, mindful of the way he’s looking at her, “I’m not going to hurt these people. It isn’t me doing this, alright? And I swear, I didn’t bring you all here.” Too weak. Course, obviously she isn’t going to hurt anyone, but she needs to justify it if she’s gonna convince him of it well enough. “See, it’s different, this face. Personality’s changed up a bit. Different tactics. So, I’m not getting anyone else involved in this. This’s just between you and me. No one else. I mean, I’d gladly, um…” What’s a really Master-ish thing to do? “Throw you into a bottomless pit, if I got the chance. Yep. You would definitely be extremely dead if there were a bottomless pit handy right about now. But hurting the others? No point.” Mustering the last dregs of her anger, the Doctor tilts her head and grins. “Thing is, I don’t **need** to use anyone else to get to you. I can hurt you just fine on my own. We clear?”

Before he gets the chance to answer, there’s a knock, and the door swings open. “Hey, is everything alright in here?” Amy asks, frowning suspiciously at the pair of them.

It’s like she’s flipped a switch. “Pond!” Eleven exclaims, straightening and swooping excitedly over to her. “Yes, everything’s good, hello! What are you doing here?” He already seems to have forgotten about the Doctor, and the conversation they’d been having just now. Or at least, if he’s still thinking about it—which he probably is—he isn’t letting on.

Huh. So that’s what she acts like, then. It’s still a bit weird, seeing herself from this angle.

“Yeah, Rory told me to check up on you two and make sure everything was alright,” the red-head tells them, giving the Doctor the obligatory squint. “Said he was a bit worried about you two being left on your own in here.” Lips thinning slightly, Amy glances back at Eleven. “ **Are** you alright?”

“Of course I am,” he brushes off a little too quickly.

Despite the fact that it’s pretty clearly a lie, Amy seems to buy it anyway. Maybe it’s just more obvious to the Doctor than it was to her, since it’s her past self who’s doing the lying and all. “Right. Well, um.” She swallows. “We moved Rita’s body. Figured it’d be better than just, uh, leaving her where she was.” Looking uncomfortable, the human shifts. “Hey, have you figured what’s going on yet, how we’re getting out of all this?”

“Faith.” It isn’t Eleven who answers. Instantly, both their eyes are on her. “It feeds on people’s faith,” the Doctor tells them, meeting both their gazes. They were going to end up finding out what the minotaur does soon enough, anyway, and she needs to give them a reason to trust her. Make them let their guards down, just a little, so she can take what she needs and get the hell out of here. “The creature in this hotel takes people who believe in something really strongly, with all their heart, and shows them their worst fear. All in order to make them fall back on that core, underlying, fundamental faith.” Swallowing, she meets Amy’s eyes. “That’s what he was going on about before you came in. Well, that and suspenders. Honestly, can you believe he thinks his outfit’s better than mine? I mean, yellow’s pretty obviously the correct choice for these things. Better than red, any day.”

“And yet, you’re still wearing suspenders,” he smoothly points out, raising a smug eyebrow. Or at least, he’s theoretically raising an eyebrow, except he doesn’t exactly have much to work with on the eyebrow front. But at least he’s running with the lie and not just calling her out on it in front of Amy. “You know, they say imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Grandly, he splays out his hands. “Consider me flattered.” Oh, she’d forgotten how much of an ego this one had on him sometimes.

Amy rolls her eyes, but she just keeps on ignoring the obvious lie. “Okay, so, it takes your faith. And, what—turns it into faith in it? Makes you…”

“Praise him,” she says.

“Yeah.”

Numbly, the Doctor straightens and grazes her fingertips lightly up against her lips. “Huh,” she murmurs. “You know, I didn’t actually mean to say that.”

All of a sudden, Eleven’s turning and staring at her with wide eyes. “You’ve started to praise it,” he realizes quietly, even though it’s kind of obvious at this point. “That means you’ve found your room. It’s starting to possess you.” His expression shifts, turning just a little more sympathetic, a little more trusting. Right now, he’s probably thinking that, if she was the one who’d made this place, if this hotel was really a trap she’d designed for him, she wouldn’t have gone into her room. Which isn’t necessarily true, given it’s the Master he thinks he’s dealing with, and their self-preservation instincts tend to be a bit skewed at times, but she’s not gonna point that out.

“Apparently,” she allows. Although, she hadn’t realized it’d started possessing her until now. That’s a little worrying.

“And, if it’s really faith that brings people here…” She really doesn’t like the way Eleven’s looking at her. “What could **you** possibly have to believe in?” he questions softly, closely scrutinizing her face. And she gets why he’s asking. After all, she can’t really imagine what the Master would have to believe in.

The problem is, the Doctor can’t really imagine what she has left to believe in, either. “No idea. Sorry.” And if he’d take his sonic out, or make it in any way more accessible to her, she wouldn’t have to worry about finding out. Seriously, is she gonna have to tackle him and steal his jacket, or something? That’s a lot less likely to work now that Amy’s in here. “But enough of that. Let’s just try and focus on how we’re getting out of here alive, yeah?”

Before anyone gets the chance to answer, Rory pokes his head in. “Hey,” he mumbles, although his eyes are locked onto her for some reason. “Um, we should go ahead and work on sorting all this out now. So we aren’t, y’know, horribly murdered.” He winces a little, clearly reassessing his word choice. But he’s still watching the Doctor, a strange look in his eyes. Huh.

Amy and him both leave. But Eleven lingers a second longer, hovering in the doorway. “You won’t do anything to hurt them,” he warns her quietly, voice back to that deadly quiet, eyes darting closely over her face. “Nothing—not one hair on their heads—is to be harmed, is that clear?”

“Oh, Doctor. You really don’t get it, do you?” Shaking her head, she smiles wanly up at him. “I don’t have to. I’m not going to interfere, I’m not going to do anything, because you’re going to do it for me. You always do. Sooner or later, you are going to get Amy and Rory Williams killed, and I couldn’t do anything about it if I wanted to.” Which she does. Kind of a lot, actually.

“Do you know them?”

She blinks. Swallows. “Sorry, what?”

“Amy and Rory,” Eleven repeats, eyes narrowed. “Do you know them? Because you keep acting like you care an awful lot about them, and I’m having a very hard time seeing exactly why you would.”

Ah. Yes, she supposes she has been letting that slip an awful lot, hasn’t she? Why the Master would care about what happened to her friends? Answer: they wouldn’t. So, a better question might be, if she was actually Missy, what would she get out of bringing them up all the time? “I’m just trying to make you understand,” the Doctor claims, tilting her head. “Let you see yourself how I see you. As you really are.” She forces a smile. “Well, actually, I think you do see it. You just don’t much like acknowledging it. Denial’s not a good look on you. About time we fixed that, don’t you think?”

When he leaves, she takes a moment to herself. Sits down on the ground a moment, closes her eyes, kneads at her forehead. And, for the first time in a while, she feels her age. Every single day pressing down on her, a tremendous weight threatening to shatter her ribcage under the sheer force of it all.

And still no sonic. Damn it. Now that’s just adding insult to injury.


	6. Chapter 6

Eventually, she manages to force herself back up to her feet, brushing herself off and walking out of the room. There’s no one directly outside of the room: not as far as she can tell, anyway, which is a little bit sloppy on Eleven’s part. After all, if she was really Missy, that would have been a major issue. He should know better than to leave the Master alone, unattended, in a room without some truly impressive defenses—and even then, with guards and security measures, it’s pretty likely that the real Master would have found a way around that anyway. They’re pretty ingenious in a tight spot, have a knack for getting out of bad situations and landing themselves and everyone else into a heap of trouble.

Good thing for them she isn’t actually Missy, eh? In full honesty, out of all the things that the Doctor was expecting to have to do today, pretending to be the Master was most certainly not on the list. She thinks she’s done a fair enough job so far, though: she’s got a full cover story, with a believable personality, and motives, and everything. It’s not perfect, of course. Some of the things she’d said, about Eleven and Amy and Rory…

It’s not perfect. But it’s where she’s at, and it’s not gonna end up mattering anyway, because she’s getting out of here and back to her TARDIS and then she’s leaving.

Where’s a good place she could take Team TARDIS, after all this’s over? Somewhere with a good amount of running and danger and adventure, just to keep things fun and interesting, but also still a nice enough place with a stellar view. Pun completely intended. There’s at least a hundred planets she can think of that fit the bill, just off the top of her head, and she knows there’s plenty more that just haven’t quite come to mind yet. Wasn’t there a place she’d been thinking of, before this all happened? Something to do with hats and furniture?

The Doctor spends a little time wandering around, keeping an ear out for the others. And the whole time, there’s words, burning on the tip of her tongue: words that aren’t hers. The minotaur’s getting into her head, trying to get her to praise it. Course, so far, she’s managed to hold it off this long—she’s more attuned to psychic manipulation, better at fighting it—but it isn’t gonna last forever. It’s gonna start actually getting into her head, soon. The actual Missy would’ve been able to fend this off better.

She really, **really** needs to stop thinking about the actual Missy.

Eventually, she opens a door, and there they are. Familiar faces all round. Brilliant. “Hello,” the Doctor chirps, fully back in character, gaze locking onto her past self. And, he still hasn’t got his screwdriver out! Ugh, that’s so inconvenient. He’s bound to take it out of his pockets eventually, right? Maybe she’ll have to give him a reason to. Or maybe if she gets the tweed itself off him somehow? “How’re things going in here, then?”

It’s only after they turn around and stare at her like she’s just kicked a puppy clear across the room that she realizes what she’s actually just said. Because, what she actually just said was “praise him.”

“Well,” she murmurs, swallowing. “That’s a problem.”

A heavy thud rocks the floor. Instantly, her head shoots up. “It’s on its way,” Rory says, although he’s stating the obvious a bit at this point. “The creature, it’s coming for both of them.” Both of them? Frowning, the Doctor straightens slightly, pushing her own thoughts aside, and follows his line of sight. He’s looking at Amy; Amy’s looking in the direction the noise’d come from, pupils dilated far too much to be natural. Ah. It’s possessing her, then. It’s starting to possess the pair of them, and it’s on its way to come kill them both off.

“Run,” Eleven suggests.

They run.

Amy’s stumbling a little, movements listless, distracted, uncertain, and the Doctor can feel her own head coming under attack. Like there’s a battering ram directly against her brain, all brute force and rhythm, trying to break its way in through her skull and smash her personality—everything she is—to bits. It isn’t gonna work, of course, because her brain’s way too developed to succumb fully to it, but it can very much start sneaking its way into her thoughts and slowing her down and taking her over for brief snatches of seconds. And it’s going to take over Amy completely, soon enough, if it gets the chance.

“Doctor,” she shouts, keeping her eyes focused on the hallway ahead of her, “we’ve gotta split up. Grab hold of Amy, find room seven.” Bit of a spoiler, but she’s saying it just in case. “Rory, do me a favor and keep me from running towards the thing trying to kill us, yeah?”

And of course, of course, Eleven turns and glares at her. Like she’s got a gun to Rory’s head, or something. “I’m not letting you out of my sight!”

“Seriously?” Swallowing back a frustrated hiss, she shakes her head—and her hair gets all in her face, flying into her eyes. Doesn’t much help with running, hair like this. Maybe she should cut it short. “If you don’t, you’re gonna get her and me both killed! Is that what you want, us dying?” He doesn’t answer. Not quick enough, anyway, and seeing as they’re literally running for their **lives** he’s gotta answer a bit faster than that! “Are you really gonna let your paranoia, your pride, get in the way of her bein’ safe?” God, she can’t **stand** him!

And then there’s a hand clamping down on her arm. “Go,” Rory orders, yanking her away, meeting Eleven’s eyes for a brief second before pulling the Doctor off in a different direction. “We’ll be fine, just go!”

She can hear Eleven screaming after them. But he doesn’t actually follow them, so that’s worth something.

The two of them keep moving, getting farther and farther away from the creature, until suddenly he’s pulling her into a room. The Doctor blinks, swaying in place. _Praise him_ , her mind murmurs, before she pushes it back down: deep, deep down into the farthest corner of her she can manage.

It isn’t gonna be far enough. Sure, she can’t hear its footsteps, so it’s probably gone off after Eleven and Amy, but it’s still possessing her. It’s still gonna be coming after them, and if she doesn’t get this sorted out somehow then it’s gonna take her over just long enough to kill her, and she can’t die now, it’s too soon, and the Doctor’s off with Amy somewhere and he’s **still** got the bloody sonic!

The Doctor groans, face scrunching, and yanks up the sleeve of her jacket to expose the vortex manipulator hiding underneath on her wrist. Maybe if she—no. No, it isn’t working, and it isn’t gonna work. She can’t reprogram it without the sonic if none of the controls are functioning, not without opening up the casing and taking the whole thing apart, and she hasn’t got the time for that. She’s running out of time.

When she glances up, Rory’s standing over her, looking a little awkward, gaze latched onto the device on her wrist. “What’s that?” he questions, brow furrowed slightly.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she says instead of actually giving a proper answer to his question, hurriedly tugging her sleeve back over it before he can get a good look at it and suss out what exactly it is. “When I said we needed to split up. I know it must’ve been difficult, what with the Doctor screaming at you not to and all.”

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t nearly as hard as you’d think.” An odd look in his eyes, he opens his mouth for a second—clearly on the verge of asking a question—then closes it. “So, what do we do?” he asks instead, evenly meeting her gaze. “I’m guessing you’ve got a plan for not dying. Or an idea, at least.”

Ah. Well, she knows what she’d done the first time, at least. “It consumes people’s faith,” the Doctor murmurs, half to herself. “The emotional energy. If we cut off its food supply, it starves to death. It’ll get the peace it asked for, we’ll be alive, and everything’ll generally be grand. The Doctor should’ve figured that out by now: he’ll be killing Amy’s faith, and his own, in order to save both their lives.” Assuming everything’s actually gone to plan. But again, the timeline hasn’t collapsed yet, so she’s hoping.

“Okay,” Rory allows slowly, clearly processing that. “So, the—the food supply. You’re saying you need to cut off your own faith, in order to stop it killing you.”

Glancing down, she nods. “Yeah, there you go. Well done. Ten points to Rory.” Something twists in her chest. She flinches. “Anyway, um—yes, food supply, cut off faith, everything’s golden. Sounds good, yeah? So here’s the problem.” The problem she’s had this whole time, that she still doesn’t know how to handle. “I’ve no idea what it is I’ve got faith in.”

His eyes widen. “Ah.”

“Yep.”

“But…” Rory’s voice trails off, uncertain. “Okay, well, I’m guessing you’re not religious or anything, or else this wouldn’t be a problem. But earlier, the Doctor said it wasn’t just that kind of faith. It was more general than that.” The floor shakes beneath them: footsteps. Still pretty far off, the creature is, but not quite far enough for her to feel comfortable. “There was this one bloke here earlier who believed in conspiracies, and for some other guy it was luck.”

“Praise him,” she mumbles, and then shakes her head. No, no no no. She’s in control of herself. “Yes, right, that’s all well and good, but I’m not huge on either of those. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love me a good conspiracy, but I don’t think they’re everywhere. And I’m usually pretty lucky, but I don’t exactly rely on it, or think it’s always coming to save me or anything like that. That’d be a bit self-centered, don’t you think? Me being lucky would make some other people consider themselves very unlucky. And trust me, I am quite often unlucky when it matters.” And she’s rambling. Focus, she needs to think, praise him, no she needs to **think**.

He’s looking more than a little worried right now. Good old Rory, Rory the Roman. Even when he thinks she’s just some random suspicious-looking stranger, he still cares. “It’s gotta be something else,” he uncertainly offers. “Like, um. Okay, faith, something you believe in.” A louder thud. The Doctor bites her lip until it bleeds. “Like, maybe you believe that a person’ll always be there for you? That’s what it was for Amy, at least. Or maybe a promise, or an affiliation or group of some kind you think’ll help protect you if you stick with them. Or a… personality trait. Bravery, or empathy, or something?”

Wait. “What was that?”

“A personality trait?” He’s frowning, looking confused.

But that wasn’t it. He’d said something else, something important, something that clicked neatly into place in her brain but then she’d lost it. “No, not that—go back one!”

“Uh, a group?”

No of course not, come on, Rory, this is important—wait, no, she remembers now. “A promise.” A promise. “Why’s that ringing a bell?” the Doctor demands, raking a hand through her hair. “C’mon, work with me.” A promise, she’d made a promise. What promise had she make? Who’d she made a promise to, this regeneration? Has she even gone around making any promises since she went all blonde and female and—

Oh.

“Oh, I get it,” she mumbles, back going stiff. A promise. Course.

She didn’t make a promise. Not this regeneration, at least. But the Doctor had most definitely made a promise, not too long ago, and the result was her: this body, this form, with all its thoughts and beliefs and hope. She is the promise.

Each and every regeneration she has ends up being influenced by something, an emotion or an event that happened at the end of the last one. Self-loathing and a war, dying for love, not wanting to go, exhausted bitterness. And you know, she doesn’t usually work out what it is until the face’s dead and gone, but. Looks like this time might be the exception to that particular rule, because now that she’s thinking about it, now that she’s **having** to think about it, she’s pretty sure she knows exactly what made her into what she is today.

Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. Never eat pears, hate is always foolish and love is always wise, always try to be nice but never fail to be kind and never ever tell anyone your name and laugh hard and run fast and be kind.

It’d been a promise. No, more than that, almost a prayer: wanting, more than anything else, to be kind and caring and good. Because no matter what he’d done, no matter how hard he’d tried, Twelve’d never quite felt like he measured up. And he had always, always wanted to be a good man.

Right. Okay, sure. She’s a bit out of options at this point. Might as well. At this point, what’s she got to lose? Well, aside from her faith. And possibly her life. But best not focus on the negatives, yeah?

Another thud. Close. Likely in the hallway that this room is on by now, if she had to guess. Calmly, the Doctor nods, straightens, and opens the door.

Rory’s yelping, trying to pull her back. Probably thinks she’s been possessed and she’s running off to go gleefully get herself killed, like all the others’ve done. But he’s wrong, she’s doing what she has to do to survive, and she can’t let him get in her way right now, so she wordlessly shoves him off and keeps walking towards it. The minotaur’s watching her with milky blue eyes, clumsily stumbling towards her, and it’s still telepathically attacking her but she’s fending it off with everything she’s got. “We’re all capable of the most incredible change,” she mumbles. “We can honor who we’ve been and choose who we want to be next.”

That’s what she’d said, before. To Tim Shaw, she thinks, the first time she’d met him. But it hadn’t really been him she’d been thinking of when she’d said it.

Swallowing, the Doctor raises her head and her voice. “It was a lie. Is that what you wanna hear?”

Well. It isn’t, not completely. People can change: some people are fully capable of carrying their past with them while still moving forwards. Humans’re really good at it. But she isn’t, she can’t, and that’s not what she’s been doing. All she’s really been doing is running away, just like always, because what else is new? She’s been doing it all her life, why would now be any better?

When she’d said it, she’d meant what she’d said with everything she had in her, because of course she had. Last regeneration, she’d hated that body, hated herself, hadn’t been able to recognize herself in a mirror half the time, and before that she’d spent every single second of every day regretting the Time War or just trying to forget it and failing. And now all that’s over, now she’s got this new body with a young face and all this energy and she’d found a way to undo what she did to her planet. So things should, by all rights, be different. She should be able to finally move on from it all and be something completely new, be happy, be good, forget her past and forget being a Time Lady and forget everything she’s seen and been and done.

And so she’d believed in what she’d said with both her hearts. Given herself a handy little set of guidelines, laid out all nice and neat and tidy, and told herself that so long as she followed them, it’d all work out in the end, that she could leave everything that’s happened behind and just be good for once. Believed that she **was** good, even. And she’s been trying so hard, running so far from it all, but now, now she’s here, and everything’s back in her head, rattling around her skull, burning in the back of her throat, and she. Can’t. She just can’t.

She is the Oncoming Storm. And she is not a good person.

The Doctor stands, and watches the minotaur die.


	7. Chapter 7

Around her, the labyrinth begins to crumble, disappearing to reveal what the place really is underneath all the 80s hotel aesthetic: a jail, a spaceship. And its sole prisoner is dying at her feet.

Distantly, she hears talking. Words. Part of her brain’s listening to it, analyzing it, picking it to tiny little pieces, but most of her’s just caught up in staring down at the minotaur and trying very, very hard not to think.

She’s getting back to her friends. Now.

The sonic’s in Eleven’s hands. Looks like he’s scanning the ship in order to double-check his theory about what this place is and why they’re here. Behind him, there’s the TARDIS. The Doctor could get in there, if she has to—Sexy’d recognize her and let her in, she knows she would—but it’s a bit risky, given the situation with the timeline. Not that that’ll stop her. She’s done far stupider things before with far less reason. But first, she’s gonna give this vortex manipulator thing one last chance.

Eyes narrowing, she watches as her past self tucks the screwdriver away into his pocket. It’s a different pocket than last time, one that’s a hair more accessible. Not much better, mind you, but still easier by the slightest fraction. Enough to justify giving this a go. “So,” she says loudly, watching his shoulders automatically tense at the sound of her voice. “You saved the day. Congratulations!” Widely, the Doctor grins, watching Eleven’s eyes quickly dart over her before landing on her own. “I mean, I’m not sure if it really counts, seeing as you only managed to save one person that wasn’t a part of your little gang, here. But still. S’worth something, I suppose.” Deliberately, subtly, she angles herself towards Amy and Rory, letting her stance turn just a bit threatening.

“Oi!” Eleven gripes, keeping his voice light and open and unbothered, although his eyes narrow. He’s picked up on her body language, on the sliver of false evidence that she’s planning on making a move he won’t be much keen on. It’s subtle enough for him to believe it’s real, yet just noticeable enough for him to pick up on it. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? And Gibbis’s here—I, for one, am counting two.”

“Ah, well, here’s the thing.” The last of the friendliness drains from her face. “We both know you didn’t save me,” the Doctor lowly states, and grins a little wider, and leans ever so slightly more towards Amy and Rory.

Jealousy. Or maybe looking for a bargaining chip, or a way to hurt him, or looking for an excuse to break that promise she’d made him earlier, or just plain boredom: whatever it is, whatever reason he ends up ascribing this to, she’s got to make him think that she’s on the verge of lunging for the pair of them. That way, he’ll be distracted, ready to try to defend them from her. That way, he won’t think to watch himself as closely, and with any luck, he won’t even notice she’s lifted the sonic off him until it’s too late.

She’s got to keep Eleven worried, and preoccupied. And, most of all, she’s got to keep him talking.

With that in mind, tilting her head, she takes a too-casual step towards them. “But all that really matters to you in the end is keeping the two of them safe, I suppose. And you’ve done that. For now. Although, y’know, I can’t help but wonder how long that’s gonna last.” Instantly, his eyes widen: taking it as a threat. Good. That’s what she meant it as. Or, meant him to interpret it as, anyway. She’d never actually hurt Amy and Rory, not on purpose. Although, she’s hurt them rather a lot not on purpose, but that doesn’t matter right now. “I mean, it’s not exactly like you’ve had the best track record on keeping people safe in the past, have you? Everybody leaves you in the end for some reason or another, ‘cept me. I’ll always be here. But these two? I’m guessing Amy and Rory’ll be gone before you know it.”

“Amy and Rory happen to be in the room,” Amy loudly interrupts, voice cutting, “so stop trying to mess with his head. It isn’t gonna work.” Except, actually, it is working. After all, she’s just saying out loud what Eleven’s been thinking for a while now. But she supposes Amy couldn’t’ve been expected to know that. “Who are you?”

Ugh, Missy’d be rude here, so she’s gonna have to be a tad bit as well. “Hush, Pond,” she murmurs, keeping her eyes locked onto Eleven, doing everything she can to keep from wincing at the nasty feel of the words in her mouth. She doesn’t like being rude to Amy! It feels awful, saying this. But she’s got to be at least a little mean if she wants her past self to think she’s actually thinking about attacking them. “The grownups are talking. Only people over five centuries old’re allowed to be a part of this conversation, sorry.”

There’s an awkward, tense pause. Oh, yeah, they’d still thought she was human, hadn’t she? Not that being over five hundred years means you aren’t human, necessarily, because she can think of a handful of exceptions to that particular rule. Still. “Um,” Rory says, raising his hand, “technically, I’m two thousand years old.”

Oh. Huh. She’d forgot about that. There’s one of the exceptions, right there. “Well, good for you,” the Doctor weakly offers up. “Better not have a proper birthday cake anytime soon. That’d be quite a lot of candles.” And he couldn’t even get one of those individual candles with numbers on, not for two thousand. Those cap off at a hundred. She’s checked.

Hang on. He’d completely derailed her train of thought. Where was she?

Ah, yes. Right. “You know this won’t last,” she tells Eleven, gaze lingering dangerously on his companions. “Honestly, I almost wish I could be here to see this fall apart. M’sure it’d be fun, watching the fireworks. The dark times.” It wasn’t fun. She remembers it, how she’d felt and thought and acted after the Ponds’d gone, and it… out of all the words she’d use to describe it, fun wouldn’t make the list. Anyway. That’s not important. Ryan, Yaz, Graham. Focus. “Shame I have to be heading off now.”

“That so?” Hook, line, sinker. “Where d’you think you’re off to in such a hurry, then?” he asks, eyes dangerously narrowing, taking a deliberate half-step forwards: placing him directly between her and the Ponds. Convenient, that is. Course, it’s obviously not a coincidence, because he’s definitely trying to get in between her and them in order to try to protect them—which, as it happens, is exactly what she’d been hoping he’d do. So that’s nice. Something going to plan, for once. “Bit rude, trying to run off when you’ve only just got here.”

“Yeah, well, you know me!” Widely, she grins at him, letting her eyes glitter darkly. “Rude.”

His expression doesn’t change: a narrow-eyed, dangerous smile. “You’re not going anywhere,” Eleven quietly states, still smiling. “Come on. You really think that after everything that’s happened, everything you’ve done, that I’m just going to let you leave? Seriously?” Softly, cynically, he laughs, although his gaze’s still locked onto hers. Afraid to take his eyes off her for a second, then. Good. “You’re coming with me.”

And there it is. Jackpot. The perfect opportunity, handed to her on a silver platter. “Excuse me?” the Doctor hisses, putting the full brunt of the Master’s fury behind her words: drawing on every time they’ve pushed her away, every time they’ve scorned and mocked and deflected, and letting that anger flow into her voice. “If you really think I’m just gonna let you keep me like some pet, you’ve got another thing coming.” Storming towards him, she keeps his eyes locked onto his face, makes absolutely sure not to glance down. Oh, she’s really hoping she remembers which pocket he’s put it in. “You can’t just lock me away!” Which is a lie, of course—she can do that, has done that—but he doesn’t know that, so it’d be a bit weird if she mentioned it. Not to mention catastrophic for the timeline.

“Can’t I?” He raises an eyebrow (if you can really call those eyebrows, which she personally doesn’t), and half of his smile tugs up a little more. “Watch me.”

Okay, that’s just rude enough to justify this reaction. “Listen, mate,” she spits, getting fully into his personal space now, eyes boring into his, jabbing at his chest—hopefully painfully—with her finger. The eye contact, the touch, what she’s saying, the fact that her body’s still angled a little like she could sprint past him and go after Rory and Amy any second now, should be enough to distract him. Probably. “In case you don’t remember? I hate you.” Blindly, her free hand inches downwards, fumbling over the front of his jacket, although she tries to keep as light a touch as she can. Wouldn’t want him to catch on. “I’d rather **die** than spend two seconds trapped on that TARDIS with you, and we both know I’m not just saying that.” Seriously, where’s the pocket? She can’t find the stupid thing!

Oh, never mind. There it is. “Tough,” she hears him saying, although her focus’s entirely on sneaking a hand into his pocket while trying to look like she’s still paying attention to him.

“Unbelievable,” the Doctor murmurs, shaking her head slightly, still glaring up into her past self’s eyes, and her fingers close around the sonic. Gently, gently, she palms it, slips it into her pocket before he’s any the wiser. “You never change, do you? Still so full of yourself, so cocky. Arrogant. How can anyone stand you, acting like that all the time? I swear, I’ll never understand how you don’t drive everyone around you off the second you open your mouth.”

“Okay, seriously, what is going on?” Amy cuts in, stepping towards them, eyeing the both of them like she’s gonna figure this out through their facial expressions alone. “Doctor?” Huh?

Oh, right. Eleven. Of course. It’s a bit stupid, but for a second there, she’d almost thought Amy was talking to her.

Y’know, that might just be the cruelest thing about all this. Having to say goodbye to them again, her Ponds, and they don’t even know it’s her. It isn’t fair. Nothing about this is fair. This is all so terribly, terribly unfair, and when this is all over, she’s gonna have some serious words with whoever’s behind all this. Assuming this isn’t all just some coincidence, the universe finding a new way to toy with her.

“You know what?” she murmurs, staring up into her own face for a second longer, and then—all of a sudden—backs out of his personal space, turns and paces away as far as she can, in what should hopefully look like a fit of dramatics. The Master’s always been keen on those, after all, so it won’t look too suspicious. “All this talk, all these empty words, and we still aren’t getting anywhere. Although, I dunno what I expected, seeing as it’s you we’re talking about. You’re full of hot air, Doctor. Nothing but smoke and mirrors. A bunch of pretty lies, trying to hide an awful truth.” White-knuckled fists hanging at her sides, hearts beating fast in her chest, she turns. “After all this time, everything we saw, everything we’ve lost, I have only one thing to say to you.”

Well. Here we go.

Quick as she can manage, she whips the stolen sonic out of her pocket, and presses it against the vortex manipulator, and silently floods the screwdriver’s psychic interface with desperation. “Bye!” she chirps, glancing back up at them and raising her eyebrows.

Instantly, his eyes widen. He yelps, slapping at his pockets for a second, clearly taking a moment to process the fact that she’d nicked it off him while he was distracted, but she isn’t paying much attention to that. She’s focusing on getting the sonic to turn this thing on. It doesn’t matter where the vortex manipulator takes her at this point, she isn’t gonna be too fussy about where she ends up, she just needs out of here, now.

“No!” Eleven roars, and lunges forward after her, and the little screen on the vortex manipulator blinks to life.

Brilliant.

Quickly, she chucks the sonic back at him: it hits him square across the face, makes him wince and blink and stumble back a second. Amy and Rory’re running towards her, too, but they aren’t gonna be fast enough to stop her. Allowing herself a grin, the Doctor pokes desperately at the controls of the vortex manipulator until she’s being hit with a very familiar wave of nausea and headache-iness and dizziness.

What’d she said before? Concussion and a hangover?

Vision blurring, she stares up at the ceiling. Or at what she thinks is a ceiling, anyway. Bit hard to tell, given that all she’s seeing is a blurry, spotty, mangled mess of color, because her eyes aren’t quite working yet, because time travel without a capsule’s a killer. But it doesn’t much matter. Whether it’s a sky or the ceiling, it’s not the same color as it’d been a second ago, meaning she’s not in the same room as she’d been in a second ago.

She won.

Giddily, she lets her head fall back against scratchy carpet, laughs softly to herself. She won. Not that it was a fight, or a competition—not exactly, anyhow—but either way, she’s out of there! She won! She can get back to her fam, everything can go back to normal, no more past selves or old friends or enemies popping up out of nowhere. Might take a little while to rewire that vortex manipulator to get it working properly, mind you, but she can do it. Everything’s gonna end up working out, in the end.

Not that she’d doubted it would, of course. Obviously. She wouldn’t have done a thing like that. But, y’know, good to have that… that verification, every once in a while! Helps keep morale up. Good for the soul, as it were. Anyway. Beside the point. She should really get a shift on, now.

Flicking her hair out of her face—really is too long, this new hair—the Doctor pushes herself up to her feet, and glances up.

And nearly falls back down. “Oh, c’mon,” she mumbles quietly to herself, staring, face scrunching up. “Now that, that is just not **fair**.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to anyone who thought we were close to the end of this fic, btw: i am absolutely incapable of writing short fics. everything i write spirals wildly out of my control.  
> so don't worry, we're not getting to the end. we're just getting into that "diverges from there" part of the summary ;)

**Author's Note:**

> i really just wanted to write some 11 angst and 13 character development (and angst) so here we are  
> tumblr at @sheerpandamonium if you wanna chat :0


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